Thinking back to when I was a kid in the 70’s, it seems safety wasn’t the top concern considering our parents let us play with toys that had some serious potential to cause damage! Risks aside, they also allowed us to learn a lot through experimentation.
Fast forward to now and it seems that a start-up out of New York is bringing the same mentality to the IoT world. LittleBits http://littlebits.cc/ is all about providing the building blocks for the “creator” in all of us. The concept provides basic tools to allow you to connect and communicate with key devices around your house (such as a thermostat). But the real excitement happens when you start to use some of the APIs that come with it….
The device allows for a more skilled amateur to add some customised code…and even tie many devices together. So, it is a device aimed at both the raw amateur as well as the more skilled DIYer in all of us.
Why is this important?
In my opinion, a generic LEGO set is one of the best toys that you can ever buy a child. I was watching a special on LEGO and it mentioned that with as little as a dozen pieces, you can build millions of different combinations of structures and elements. These sets allow a child to become as creative as they wish…and over the years numerous people have become LEGO addicts (like Will Ferrell’s character in my kid’s favourite movie, the LEGO Movie). If you ask many of today’s engineers, architects and designers, a lot of them confess to getting their “building bug” by starting with LEGO as children.
While I am not sure if the CloudBit offering from LittleBits will have the same appeal to millions of children around the world, the idea is similar. If you can get kids who are already interested in connecting devices around their home to start playing with LittleBits, it will help inspire more talented and driven people to enter the world of IoT in future years.
The Bottom Line
I am in favour of anything that drives more attention and more talent to our industry. While these solutions from LittleBits may not be ones you deploy to control 100,000 utility meters in a rugged environment, they do have the ability to foster a lot of innovation in our industry. I think we need to both applaud their efforts and encourage kids to play with them. At least they will not burn off their eyebrows like we did playing with a chemistry set as kids….Long story.
